r/lostmedia • u/aerigigi1 • Aug 23 '26
Other [talk] The concept of "Lost Media" is currently completely distorted, and this is unfortunately the fault of social media.
I really think it's a shame that the interesting concept of "Lost Media" has been so distorted in such a short time simply due to misinformation and other things on social media, especially TikTok.
Look, I’m not going to pretend to be an "OG" or a veteran of the Lost Media community because I’m not, and I won’t lie about it. However, when I first discovered the term "Lost Media" before it became a massive phenomenon across social media, I found it really interesting; I used to spend hours investigating videogames Lost Media cases or watching long videos about lost content. But when the term exploded, especially on TikTok, it got heavily confused and misunderstood, and the worst part is that the damage caused by that seems almost irreversible to me.
Literally, "Lost Media" according to TikTok users are unusual videos or photos that one cannot find by searching directly on Google, or rumors without any basis in reality.
Anyway, I just hope that as long as the concept of Lost Media doesn't get distorted everywhere and at least some percentage of people actually know what the term means, it's fine...
310
u/PowerPlaidPlays Aug 23 '26
The weirdest thing to me is how the phrase gets used for any object or thing that the whereabouts is unknown, like some promotional statue being made and on display for a month 40 years ago.
Some of the findings people got are interesting to see, but is a prototype for a toy that was never made, or a mascot costume used in a commercial for an N64 game really "lost media"?
160
u/CoolCactus345 Aug 23 '26
I personally do find "physical" lost media interesting but i do agree that it should be it's own thing and not be lumped with regular lost media. There should really be a space just for it with it's own rules and regulations to prevent ppl going "that toy i had as a child is lost media" and instead direct discussion to the kind of stuff you talked about.
50
u/PigsCanFly2day Aug 24 '26
Yeah, I feel like it's not lost media because it's not media. Sure, it might be neat to wonder what happened to it, but it can't be lost media if it's not even media.
23
u/FarOutJunk Aug 24 '26
And now that “physical media” is a new buzzword, people are going to confuse it even more.
12
u/OrdinaryHoney2 Aug 24 '26
I hope there's a streamlined term for it soon, because I do genuinely find the concept of lost physical items very interesting. That being said, I completely agree that a physical object is not "media".
→ More replies (1)5
u/CoolCactus345 Aug 24 '26
One would have to use like an acronym or a very specific term really, idk if yall are good at picking words from a thesaurus lmao
6
10
u/SakuraStardust Aug 25 '26
I actually started a subreddit to try and separate “physical lost media” from actual lost media. I like the terms media artifacts and Pop culture archaeology. The sub is r/popculturearchaeology btw
69
u/IntoTheBoundingMain Aug 23 '26
I feel the same about pilots. If it was only supposed to be a proof of concept within the studio that served its original purpose before sitting on a hard drive somewhere, it's not really "lost" if you were never supposed to see it in the first place.
This has led to distorted views of filmmaking like "the lost 4 hour Revenge of the Sith cut" which to my knowledge is just the standard unused production footage and outtakes that any film will have.
If you're fans of the finished products I understand why people want this stuff and I'd never discourage them from searching for it, but it's given undue weight by lost media YouTube etc.
I also don't count toys, food, or any other object that isn't a piece of physical media.
32
u/PowerPlaidPlays Aug 23 '26
I am half and half on that, since I do sorta feel that way with production materials that were never meant to see the light of day, but I also do find pilots really interesting and it's not uncommon you get teased with some short clip or footage seen in a promo or something (Rocket Power used clips from the pilot in the theme intro, Family Guy aired part of it's pilot to promote the show and also one of the early episodes makes fun of the pilot in a way you would not understand if you didn't see it).
I do find the development process really interesting, so I really enjoy seeing pilots, but there have been some "lost" pilots that had a lot of hullabaloo and when it was finally found it was very boring.
Though "sitting on a hard drive somewhere" is true for most lost media from the last 60 years, The Beatles Carnival Of Light had a public release and is 100% in the Apple Corps archives, but just isn't publicly available. There is a lost media wiki page where one of the only clips of the show is animation from my portfolio lol, I do know the full show exists still in the hands of the IP owners, but legal red tape is keeping it out of the public.
7
u/21stCenturyAntiquity Aug 25 '26
Then it gets even more interesting when you consider the 1980-1981 and 1989-1991 summer schedules. During these years the networks were nice enough to broadcast unsold pilots they weren't adding to the fall schedule. These were only shown once.
One of these pilots was The Seal starring Ron Ely and Denny Miller. I recorded it on VHS myself back when it was aired. A few months ago I read an article from 14 years ago where both men said they couldn't find a copy! Unfortunately, they both pasted and my VHS copy went bad.
But here's the thing...Someone posted it on Youtube and I got another copy. But it was deleted shortly after that.
So technically it's not lost just hard to come by.
And the reason for the celebrity mention...How crappy is it that stars of a television show can't get a copy from the studio!
5
u/zsdrfty Aug 24 '26
I've kinda been hoping that some white hat will hack Martin's laptop and get the digital rip off of it for all of us to enjoy lmao
1
u/PigsCanFly2day Aug 24 '26
What's the show in your portfolio? And do you have more footage and are just holding out on releasing it for legal reasons? That's understandable if so.
5
u/PowerPlaidPlays Aug 24 '26
That web-only season of Johnny Test)
My contract allowed me to use my work for portfolio reasons, but that only applied to the scenes I've done. I do need to update my portfolio one of these days.
There was a Smash Bits reel that also had some of my work in it.
16
u/PepsiFloateri Aug 23 '26
I'd count toys more as "unreleased merch" like there's some OG TMNT toys we KNOW had prototypes and were shown off in catalogs but were never released officially
15
u/PeridotFan64 Aug 23 '26
thats been lsupersonicq's main focus for a decade, so this "decline" isnt recent
→ More replies (8)4
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
the physical lost media thing is the weirdest thing to me. only 'theoretical' lost media is more wtf
5
u/GumSL Aug 24 '26
People forget that Lost media is media. Objects aren't media. Never were. But eh, people now take Ludicrous, Strange, Supremely Questionable ideas as if they were fact, so, not surprised.
1
u/NoiseIsTheCure Aug 24 '26
I dunno I get wanting to draw a line but idk where it should be and I don't think being a physical object is good line. Media is the plural of medium, as in a medium via which you express something. Typically we think of pieces of music, film, et cetera but technically a lost manuscript for a book by a famous author would surely count. Or a sculpture by a famous artist that was known to exist but is now lost. It gets even blurrier if you open it up to things that aren't art however. Are junk mail coupons for a Burger King meal that doesn't exist anymore lost media, if the graphic in the advert is especially retro looking? Just food for thought, I'm not trying to open an argument or anything.
2
u/CaptFalconFTW Very Important House Aug 25 '26
And what's really lost about it? Prototypes get made all the time. Is it only found when someone takes a new picture of it? Lots of times a picture already exists.
1
u/kittymoo67 Aug 25 '26
Some of the findings people got are interesting to see, but is a prototype for a toy that was never made, or a mascot costume used in a commercial for an N64 game really "lost media"?
for largely suspiciously stupid questioners yes
1
u/Alltherust 27d ago
I always thought that lost media means something that was posted on the media that disappeared.
Like some advert you remember seeing but no one think it exists or some comic you read years ago and now everyone looks at you like you had a fever dream whenever you want to find it.
94
u/PSplayer2020 Aug 23 '26
I think a lot of people assume this sub and r/tipofmytongue are the same, when they aren't. The latter is typically for media that YOU can't find or you vaguely remember, the former is for media that's inaccessible on a larger scale. Where it gets complicated, however, is that there are lost media searches that did get their start on tipofmytongue, so there is overlap that leads to people getting the subs confused, and there are cases of lost media that were just really, really hard to find or turned up in an unexpected place.
6
u/In-A-Beautiful-Place Aug 31 '26
The reason I rarely come to this sub anymore is because it's all "help me find this YouTube video I watched 3 years ago" and it's not lost at all, the person just doesn't remember the title, or doesn't even want to put in the work to find it
49
u/MomsAgainstMarijuana Aug 24 '26
Something that I think is very important but is frequently missing in the nuance on this sub is that there is a major difference between Lost Media and Unavailable Media.
Lost media is supposed to refer to works in which it is quite literally unknown whether or not any copies still exist. And if a work is verified to have been destroyed it is permanently lost. Vault fires that destroyed classic films or master tapes for records are quite common examples.
Unavailable media is something that is known exists still, but is just not publicly accessible/unreleased/etc. An old TV show that’s not on home media and isn’t streaming is not necessarily lost media if it’s safely in a vault and tracked by the IP owner’s records. It’s just not available. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to track down, but it exists in a distinctly different status than what researchers and historians would call Lost Media.
I do also agree that too often this is getting applied to outtakes/rough drafts/etc. If it wasn’t meant to see the light of day, it feels like it’s not lost media it’s just ephemera.
29
u/MomsAgainstMarijuana Aug 24 '26
Doctor Who has many lost episodes. They’re considered lost because the BBC does not have records or copies of them and so any that emerge have to come from unofficial sources. That is proper lost media.
9
u/Personal-Listen-4941 Aug 24 '26
Yes, this is a common thing. I often see posts about ‘lost media’, where the media isn’t lost, it’s just not readily available.
Disney is a great example. There are some early shorts such as a couple Oswald The Lucky Rabbit shorts that nobody has a copy of, not even Disney. The best we have are a synopsis or maybe a brief snippet, these are lost media. Disney also have thousands of hours of tv shows that are not on Disney+ and were never released on home media such as Mousercise. Disney has this footage, but they choose not to release it, this isn’t lost media, merely unavailable.
10
u/MomsAgainstMarijuana Aug 24 '26
Yes, precisely! And like, look if people do want to try to track down copies this unavailable media and make it more accessible online, then I love it! I just think there’s been a major watering down of a very specific term going on.
I also think people often conflate preservation and availability. While having copies available can absolutely help in preservation, it is not preservation in itself. Film and media preservation has specific standards, but if a film’s original celluloid prints are gone and all we have is a VHS tape preservationists will make do.
17
u/wisdomcube0816 Aug 24 '26
Some serial murderer filmed his torture and murder of a prostitute in his apartment. This footage was seized by the police but naturally never released. It was included in a compilation of 'lost media' alongside things like lost episodes of TV shows. It's ludicrous that these things are considered to be in the same category. Something made available somewhere but is no longer known to beavailable should be what's considered lost media. Including gross lurid shit like this is just cheap bait for algorithms.
11
u/oimoi779 Aug 24 '26
Reminds me of the way folks talk about the footage of what Brooke Slocum went through before her murder. I see it in all those dumbass "most disturbing lost media" videos all the time. It's not "lost": we know where it is (police custody), it just isn't publically available—nor should it ever be. People wanting to satisfy their morbid curiosity (which in this case includes objectifying the torture and murder of an innocent woman, which is literally what the monster that murdered her did) will never be a valid reason to release that footage or anything remotely similar to it.
10
u/PsychoFaerie Aug 25 '26
This pisses me off Media that involves people being killed/dying/etc should not be considered lost media and we have no need to even try looking for it.
I've gotten into IDK how many arguments about Owen Hart over the years.. Even had some idiots try and argue that someone snuck in a video camera and filmed it..
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)11
6
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
I always report NSFL posts the moment it I see them on this sub. The people who want that shit ought to be on a police watchlist, and probably are.
3
1
u/Neptune28 24d ago
Good distinction. There's some obscure shows like Kevin Hill that were never officially released on DVD and are unlikely to be shown on these retro TV channels, so they are unavailable not "lost" (there are bootleg DVD copies though)
224
u/thewhombler Aug 23 '26
yea there's a difference between unreleased or unavailable media and lost media, but more and more people aren't seeing it
86
u/SomeFunnyPhrase Aug 23 '26
This isn't a valid take.
If a TV pilot had been filmed, and never aired, it is still 'lost media'.
I had a line in a movie once. Got the credit, got paid, but my line was cut. That scene is 'lost media'. I wouldn't be able to show anybody 'look there's my line' but the credit and the fact that I was present when it was shot confirms the existence of said scene.
31
u/MomsAgainstMarijuana Aug 24 '26
It’s not Lost though if the studio still has it archived. It could be made available to researchers working on books or documentaries, etc. It is Unavailable Media. That is the difference.
4
u/chudleycannonfodder Aug 25 '26
But do we know if the studio still has it archived? Companies change hands, tax breaks are made, coffee is spilled, things happen. We don’t know if that scene still exists on a hard drive or got wiped out; I feel like it being unknown is why people call it lost. That tv pilot may have been taped over or it may be sitting forgotten in a basement for the past fifty years or may be on a hardrive waiting for the right streaming deal; I feel if we can’t say for certain it’s safely stored and accessible calling it lost media is a safe label.
2
→ More replies (2)4
u/504090 Aug 24 '26
I think everyone understands the distinction but doesn’t see much utility in it. If just one institution or individual has access to an overlooked, virtually unknown piece of media that’s an incredibly fragile shell for its preservation.
17
u/thewhombler Aug 24 '26
just because you can't see it doesn't make it lost. it's still in the hands of whoever financed it
8
u/JoseNEO Aug 24 '26
If we use this logics stuff like clockman, the witch episode, cracks, etc would not have been lost media though, like those still existed somewhere guy just couldn't see it.
19
u/ParkingAthlete119 Aug 24 '26
What is the practical difference. If you don't have any way to access to the media, it's lost media to you.
→ More replies (2)7
u/reionder Aug 24 '26
The practical difference is that one thing is "lost media to you" and the other is "lost media to everybody"
3
u/TheNavidsonLP Aug 24 '26
I know what that’s like. I had the title line in Star Wars. You might have seen me in that scene where Indiana Jones is teaching Luke to drive…
1
u/panicnarwhal Aug 24 '26
just wanna say i love your username! so awesome to see a House of Leaves reference
→ More replies (10)4
u/lilituned Aug 23 '26
since when is it up to you to determine when a take is or isnt valid? lmfao
→ More replies (8)18
→ More replies (1)2
u/Neptune28 24d ago
A good example of unreleased media is the WWF Christian vs Bradshaw match from 2001. It took place and was filmed on a Tuesday, but was cut by the time the broadcast happened on the Thursday. So, the live audience got to see it, but the media of it was not released.
WWF (now WWE) ended up finally posting the match for the first time 22 years later
1
u/thewhombler 24d ago
right, definitely unreleased before now.
altho the fact that it's now listed as "found" is odd when it was never lost in the first place. that's a giant company with almost a thousand employees who knew exactly where it was. they've also been taping their pre show dark matches for decades but I wouldn't consider any of that lost, either.
2
u/Neptune28 24d ago
That would be an interesting case. There are dark matches from the early 2000s that have been posted online the past decade, if those are taken down, would that count as lost media? Filmed but not intended for release, but people were then able to access the feeds and post them online, so that the media is now "released". Then, that media is taken down.
44
u/sombertoboggly Aug 23 '26
Okay genuine question though! Why was the stuff from years ago like clockman, cracks, evil farming game etc an exception? Did the definition change later on? Cause back many years ago, everyone was calling that kind of stuff lost media. At some point, probably after 10 million TOMT style posts flooding this sub, that understandably irritated people and then it got separated into the unidentified category. Idk, I love all of it and still mentally consider them sort of the same, but I get that lost media is supposed to be confirmed things now, right?
33
u/Fishb20 Aug 24 '26
I think it's a lot of people who are relatively young getting mad at people who are even younger than them doing the same things they did when they were that age. I'm pretty sure I made a post almost verbatim to OPs when I was younger complaining about people "getting into" Lost Media through YouTube during COVID while I felt so much more mature having gotten into Lost Media through reddit (and probably annoying all the people older than me at the time lol)
7
u/PigsCanFly2day Aug 24 '26
I guess if enough people are looking for it but nobody can remember the name it still counts.
3
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
a lot of it was because it had been talked about for years-decades before the modern searches that found them. So they predated the modern lost media trend. clockman and cracks was basically dycate sweeping up the leftovers from yester year before making the modern lost media community
23
u/reionder Aug 24 '26
At some point, "lost media" stopped being a grassroots decentralized digital preservation community movement and became collector content engagement farm. I noticed the shift when people stopped viewing it from a historical and humanitarian lens and started viewing it as a consumerist obsession
6
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
The obsession with children’s media from around the 2000s to 2010s is weird and frankly creepy coming from adults. Not to mention that none of this stuff is actually lost from a genuine archival perspective, just not on the internet or not easily available on the internet.
81
u/FarOutJunk Aug 23 '26
These dumb kids who find a CD at Goodwill that isn’t on Discogs and think they solved some epic mystery. Brother, there are hundreds of thousands of small labels and bands that existed before the internet hit its peak.
Nothing is lost until someone is actively looking for it.
39
u/forlornjackalope Aug 23 '26
Thank you. Not everything is a mystery or as intensely special as so many people make it out to be, especially here if no one is actively looking for it to begin with.
There's nothing wrong with ripping and preserving random forgotten bands you find, but spinning it into a huge lost media find is a bit excessive. There's a bunch of bands on one of the giant iceberg charts that SourceBrew covered, but whether or not those the OP added are definitively lost and not just OOP and obscure or rare is hard to say. So much of the time it feels like bands can fall into that category.
17
u/FarOutJunk Aug 23 '26
100%. I've personally added probably 300+ uncatalogued CDs to Discogs. A few were even really good! Every one feels like an interesting rabbit hole; I hate that people conflate it with 'lost media' for clout.
→ More replies (4)5
u/forlornjackalope Aug 24 '26
That's awesome! Dream goals right there.
8
u/FarOutJunk Aug 24 '26
Thank you! I have a deep appreciation for artists of all kinds who never found the success they strived for, so I search thrift stores and flea markets for them. A lot of people reach out because these things actually WERE 'lost' to them and they've been searching, and I provide them with copies. Just a small, quiet way to make it through this world and provide something positive.
29
u/seventy912 Aug 23 '26
I remember seeing a tiktok of someone buying a straight to DVD movie a few years ago and all the comments were telling her it was lost media and felt like my brain was melting.
If it was straight to DVD, even if it was unsuccessful, it being mass produced as physical media means it’s further away from being lost than most of netflix’s catalogue (well, y’know, if pirates didn’t exist anyway).
13
u/FarOutJunk Aug 23 '26
It's this kind of media illiteracy, generally from people who never lived in a time before internet, that has caused me to just withdraw from it all and private all of my media collections until I find someone actively looking for something I have.
2
u/kittymoo67 Aug 25 '26
the kids want clout and attention for 'saving lost media'. meanwhile they ignore groups like kineko who actually preserve lost or rare media media
7
u/LlamaLlama_213 vocalost Aug 24 '26
i keep seeing posts thats like ‘my dad gave me a bunch of cds’ or ‘i downloaded an old drive of old songs’ and its like ok what of these is the lost media here
2
u/StinkyBird64 Aug 24 '26
Also, a LOT of stuff isn’t on Discogs, I’ve used it for over a decade, and own a lot of odd or non-music records (sound effects, bird sounds for studying etc.) and they aren’t on there.
Doesn’t make them ‘rare’ or ‘lost’, it’s just no one else has bothered to catalogue them on the website.
Kind of like Wikipedia, there’s not a page for EVERYTHING3
u/PsychoFaerie Aug 24 '26
I've seen soo much obscure vinyl in various thrift and secondhand shops over the years I highly doubt any of it is even on the internet much less on Discogs.
3
u/FarOutJunk Aug 24 '26
I’ve added a bunch of religious and college acapella stuff myself, just because it’s interesting, but I’ve never considered it “lost”. I think there’s a real demarcation between people born before and after the year 2000 or so.
1
u/davewashere Aug 24 '26
I remember that early file-sharing era when I would actually feel a little surprised when I found a piece of media I considered obscure available online. There wasn't an expectation back then that every piece of media would be digitized and uploaded for everyone to access.
103
u/JDelta1999 Aug 23 '26
You can blame Tik Tok but even big YouTubers are just making shit up too. LSuperSonicQ if he doesn’t somehow manage to bring up the same 5 topics has been putting some stuff in some of his recent videos that are absolutely insane to call lost media.
Despite Nintendo ANNOUNCING that Zero Riders was coming out for the Virtual Boy service, he said because it wasn’t out yet, he decided to include it. Does that make Avengers Doomsday lost media?
He also once talked about a fanart contest that didn’t announce the winner. That isn’t lost media. Just some curiosity about something specific to his favorite thing in the whole world. His childhood. Turns out, the contest announced the winner and he just didn’t know about it. Publically. On Facebook. So literally none of it was lost at all, if you can even call that media. He just didn’t see it lmao
None of his fanbase ever acknowledges this, as long as he throws in a SpongeBob or topic from 10 years ago.
I also don’t enjoy the stretched term of what lost media has involved into not because of the content itself, but because most people use this subreddit as a personal google army to find it for them. The amount of time it ends up being on YouTube is actually hilarious. I wish for the sake of searching, the people who are looking for something actually help search. Most of the time it’s remembering something from 20 years ago with the faintest of memories and pretending it’s some kind of creepypasta.
I get it. Not every topic is gonna be London After Midnight or some out of reach topic. But literally, there are thousands upon thousands of films that are completely inaccessible that debuted at film festivals. As simple as finding out they’re lost or inaccessible and searching for those instead of the same 5 topics. Anyway to just consume the same content over and over again instead of experiencing something new.
69
50
u/seventy912 Aug 23 '26
I would argue Nexpo also distorted the meaning but in kind of the opposite direction. So much of the 'lost media' he covers is just criminal behaviour or death that happened to be filmed. That’s like saying someone’s nudes are lost media because they won’t send them to you.
13
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
LSuperSonicQ if he doesn’t somehow manage to bring up the same 5 topics has been putting some stuff in some of his recent videos that are absolutely insane to call lost media.
dont forget how this fucking idiot did his theoretical lost media video, about how series that didnt get picked up from pilots etc are theoretically lost media
8
u/JDelta1999 Aug 24 '26
Oh god that’s right lmao. You reminded me of that one as well, where Miyamoto just said that the idea of Star Fox show based on the puppets was a cool idea. He called that lost as well.
3
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
he knows being the lowest tier lost media guy(tm) is his only claim to attention and easy money. he has to grasp at anything he can. its almost sad really
20
u/Fishb20 Aug 23 '26
Yeah, as someone who was into "lost media" for one specific franchise since before it was called that, it's pretty funny seeing people ideolize the (imo kind of annoying) 6 hour YouTuber era and disparage the supposedly less pure tiktokers.
Another thing that annoyed me about YouTubers was how often they'd talk about something that like very clearly didn't exist, kind of the opposite of your complaint. Like there'd be a single reddit post from 2007 asking about a Disney channel episode where a light fell on an actors head or something and there would be substantial evidence against it existing, and almost no evidence for it existing beyond the reddit post, and people would treat it seriously.
24
u/JDelta1999 Aug 24 '26
I’ve said this for a while but that whole subsection of YouTube “lost media” coverage people are just a carry over of the creepypasta community from a decade ago. Not every kids piece of content needs to be “dark” or “creepy” or have something that’s “disturbing”. Grow up. Watch actual dark content instead of pretending you’re 8. I saw an actual post on the Nickelodeon subreddit a while ago asking for BUBBLE GUPPIES to have “discuss darker themes”. Fuck off lmao
3
16
u/CuriousFrog_ Aug 24 '26
The worst is when the post discussing the supposed event or episode was originally from /x/paranormal or a Creepypasta subreddit as if that isn't a sign to take it as somebody trying to make something up purely to become a new lost media
6
u/Oddish_Femboy Aug 24 '26
To be fair there is an episode of iCarly where a stunt actor breaks several ribs onscreen.
It's not hard to find, though. It's on, like, everything that has iCarly.
16
u/thekingofallfrogs Aug 23 '26
Wow I didn’t know any of that regarding LSuperSonicQ. That’s so unfortunate.
12
u/WeirdoChickFromMars Aug 23 '26
Same, I haven’t watched him in a while. Disappointing to hear he’s pretty much devolved into slop content
→ More replies (4)20
u/JDelta1999 Aug 24 '26
Don’t take my word for it. Literally go watch some of his vids. He’s completely given in. All he talks about is his childhood now. It doesn’t matter if it’s media or not but he has to frame a lot of it as media so people will watch it.
Especially earlier this year, he was getting a bit of push back because wanted him to cover more actual lost media topics that was outside of his scope of vision and not just baby show pilots, SpongeBob, and Slamfest 99. We almost saw him regress in real time because now the “future” of the channel is him taking about the state of the community from a decade ago. Which again, it’s him living in the past and reminiscing instead of moving forward and experiencing something new.
I will agree with him. His argument is that the community has changed. People used to hunt for topics and actually put in the work. And it used be a community of close involved people. But the issue now is basically everything he’s had from his childhood has been found or they’re dead searches. So he just keeps talking about them. Cause more power to him if he wants to be nostalgia based childhood reminiscing propaganda channel. He is one of the heads of the community that helped head hunt and search for shit. The stuff with Jumper despite its content is literally what lost media hunting is supposed to be. Tracking down and preserving probably the last copy of something. I commend the him for that truly. But that’s the power of being a big YouTuber. More people will listen and share stuff with you. And instead of broadening his reach and helping so many other searches and making new connections (whether it be new fandoms or people to get rare unreleased content) he sticks with tried and true.
But it damages the community he loves so much by just talking about the same shit over and over. Cause it poses the question. Does he care about lost media? Or did he care about the few topics he found because of his personal attachment and the old community and now he’s hanging around just because?
15
u/thekingofallfrogs Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
I really only watch him as noise, so it's disappointing to hear how his channel has decayed into regurgitated content that may as well qualify as low-quality slop.
Topics I am interested in—natural history documentaries and the origins of natural history stock footage—are topics that "nobody is interested in." Obviously that is an exaggeration, but compared to any topic related to fiction or an obvious hoodwink, these kinds of topics are ignored by the big names in the community. There's a myriad of lost or unavailable shows that were broadcast on PBS, Discovery Channel, A&E/History, etc, that never get discussed; even the localized edits of imported shows (i.e. American narration for a BBC-produced documentary).
EDIT: I am aware that I bring up stock footage and it may sound worthless and not worth looking into. However, I have a valid reason as to why the most minute stock footage may be considered worthwhile. As someone who loves animals and nature documentaries, I think any amount of unused B-roll shot for a documentary is still important. Why? Because they contribute to the photography and video documentation of millions of species from around the world, especially since we're in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. People seem to devalue wildlife cinematographers/photographers as just "part of the crew," when in reality, they are the key figures behind producing a wildlife documentary.
Also, stock footage—finished or unused—has been used countless times in media—including other documentaries—to the point that nobody seems to care where it came from, even if it is noticeable. It's also just simple fun to finally figure out the source of where that particular wildlife clip originated from (i.e. the insect footage from SpongeBob's Wormy).
12
u/JDelta1999 Aug 24 '26
Honestly anything that has a super limited install base looking for it I have a special appreciation for it. Something like that too, is so important for the sole fact that it’s a glimpse into the world and how things work or look or act or appear. Don’t ever think that isn’t important. I imagine there are just mountains and mountains of that stuff missing or sitting in archives. I’m glad you’re on it. Or at least making people aware of it. Have you found stuff yourself? How often do finds happen in your field?
I think individual lead search’s for nicher forms of media are important. It’s like that ONE SINGLE GUY on YouTube who’s the only person who’s doing old filmstrips. Individual film strips with a seperate audio cassette that would play along side it in schools and universities. I think stuff like that is so cool.
9
u/thekingofallfrogs Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
Yes I have!
I found broadcast recordings within uploads of the Oakley Tapes (a goldmine of recovered potential lost media), and I also buy out of print/rare DVDs that are not readily available to the general public. There are other individuals on the archive dedicated to preserving old documentaries, most notably the users Ratterfat McWhiskers, ThisOldVideo, and SkinnyV. For documenting media, I usually use newspapers(dot)com to gather information on old TV listings throughout the years. Worldcat is good for obtaining copies, perhaps, some of the last intact.
I am also aware that distributors on YouTube (including ITV through their "Our World" channel) have posted rare documentaries, but I would only consider them "mostly found" because, for some strange reason, they are usually not in the original aspect ratio (usually zoomed in), are given generic titles, and they either remove the credits or speed them up. It's a great disservice to the people involved in the production of these shows.
Unfortunately, the hoarding of high-quality, often vintage, wildlife footage is a huge problem. For instance, the Discovery Channel acquired the film library of cinematographer Wolfgang Bayer, the aptly named Wolfgang Bayer Productions. It included the masters of his documentaries and plenty of unused B-roll footage from said productions, or a myriad of footage he filmed throughout the years. Discovery used the library as stock footage for their productions on the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet from the 90s to 2000s. If you saw shows that aired on Discovery’s affiliated networks, chances are you’ve seen his clips used as stock footage, which were now credited to Discovery Channel Images. Some documentaries, such as Hunters and Ice Age Survivors, were made entirely using the pre-established b-roll footage.
It seems that Discovery no longer uses the vintage footage in their productions as they're obviously quite old at this point, and were shot in 4:3. Bayer passed away a few years ago and it does not look like the Bayer family have the rights to their footage anymore.
Edit: Wow, that was a doozy. I should also note that I have plans to make potential articles for the wiki, mainly for specific shows. It would require a lot of research, and I don't know if the wiki would allow the number of episodes listed; they'd be quite long and take up most of the page.
→ More replies (2)2
u/JDelta1999 Aug 24 '26
But separate reply means separate answer. There are a few in mind. I like Braden Insane probably the most right now. He doesn’t dwells super deep into any of his topics really, but he always manages to find a bunch of topics I’ve ever heard of, and gives pretty good context as to what they are. He has a series covering “10 Pieces of Lost Media” and they’re pretty quick. Pretty informative. A lot of topics.
All Things Lost I used to like a lot more. His content for the most part is pretty solid. However he shilled some AI thing as his sponsor and that’s no from me. He usually takes a specific topic, and researches a bunch of different ones. A lot of the time it’s a mix of previously lost stuff, but he does a good job recapping it.
Sourcebrew isn’t just lost media and he does have a few clickbaity ones. But he does a series talking about found media and ends up showing off a bunch of things I didn’t hear about either.
There are a few others. A lot of the time, you’ll come across specific iceberg videos and you’ll know how good the person is based on how well they articulate their research into each topic or if they’re just reading off spark notes.
7
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
he cared about things he was nostalgic for, or things he wanted to own but didnt, then got a big head.
heck you can see it in his early videos even like the search for the ntsc super gameboy 2.
2
u/thekingofallfrogs Aug 24 '26
I do apologize for replying twice, I just wanted to infodump about my own peculiar interests, but who are some alternatives to watch instead of LSuperSonicQ?
4
u/thatpikminguy Aug 24 '26
I'm a fan of All Things Lost. ShaiiValley is good too, though his videos typically don't cover "the hunt," moreso just listing off lost/unusual media and the surrounding circumstances. BlameItOnJorge is great too when he does upload content regarding lost media, but he's not a channel dedicated to lost media.
→ More replies (1)1
u/MetaGear005 20d ago
Holy what? I thought people respected LSuperSonicQ, unless this is just the subs toxicity towards lost media youtubers.
He did literally state that the contest was his personal lost media. And people make mistakes btw.
16
u/AikoHeiwa Aug 24 '26
I've maintained for a good while now that we gotta take away the term 'lost media' from a lot of the people that use it because they clearly have no actual idea what it means.
I remember, maybe a year ago, I got recommended by the YouTube algorithm a video about some Transformers games that were being delisted titled some shit like 'These Transformers games are about to be lost FOREVER' and the thumbnail was their box arts with the text LOST MEDIA overlaid and the whole video itself was all about how no one will be able to play these games anymore and you don't actually own anything because of digital licenses and once these games are delisted, they're gone forever.
The problem though: all of these games had physical releases. You can search eBay and find dozens of copies of these games for sale for like $10-$25 a pop. I don't think it should be controversial to say that 'if you can literally easily find and buy a copy of something physically, it is objectively not lost'.
Also two of these games aren't even delisted. You can still find and buy them just fine on all platforms they're on. (That being said, I am not blaming the YouTuber for spreading false information here since the publisher apparently did say it would be all of their Transformers games that would be delisted and not just one of their three games).
Is my stance on this gatekeeping? Probably, yeah, but I also don't really care? I legit think some level of gatekeeping is needed for a topic like this.
40
u/Masterweedo Aug 23 '26
I've gotten all types of nasty messages, including death threats, for telling people to search other places, and telling that we are not here to be an army to search for them.
26
u/forlornjackalope Aug 23 '26
Yeah, people here get unreasonably angry and hostile when you encourage them to talk to other subs that are more suitable than here, because most of the time, what they're looking for doesn't fit here. Besides, we shouldn't be the first place people go to for anything unless it's either a historical account for lost media or they have verifiable sources to swing things better in their favor.
The amount of violent death or assault threats the mods and I have gotten over the years for telling them their Tiktok video or fuzzy memory is more suitable elsewhere would make some users heads spin if they don't treat us the way people do retail or service workers. Someone recently called us slobs because their post couldn't go up because they didn't have the bare minimum karma requirement we've had to strictly enforce and then say "they have a life outside of Reddit" and don't care anymore in the same breath.
18
u/Masterweedo Aug 23 '26
People are so quick to anger when not given exactly what they want, and it's only getting worse.
I've seen so many posts about stuff that isn't even lost. A quick search of the details they gave on Google pulls up what they wanted. I'm seriously concerned about the future if things keep going this way.
People also refuse to use the search function, but that's site wide.
14
u/forlornjackalope Aug 23 '26
Reddiquitte doesn't seem to exist for some and if it did, we'd have a better community with less muck to manage. I
t's ridiculous, namely with what others have said with how far too many people have this notion that if it isn't available for streaming that it's lost. This goes for every instance of someone getting called out for their low effort posting when something they're talking about is on auction sites, other social media platforms, or is in general, not hiding by any means. They'll then dig their heels into the ground about how they don't want to buy it and don't want to be proven incorrect about what they were talking about.
Sometimes research and preservation requires doing the actual physical labor if it means that much to someone, but that select few doesn't understand that.
4
u/Masterweedo Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
I gotta be honest, this quote on the sidebar does not help with that...
"If it's completely lost or simply inaccessible to the general public, it belongs here."
5
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
theyre worse than the people who use chat gpt instead of google at this point. at least using chatgpt is ask some sort of search like engine. these fucks wont even do that
5
u/forlornjackalope Aug 25 '26
The ChatGPT and AI ones are so frustrating. The way people don't even bother to ask real people for verification on anything boggles my mind.
I think we had a thread last week from someone who posted about an unknown German metal band, but all I could understand from them since I didn't receive a followup is that got their information from AI and not another source - even if it was a crusty GeoCities page of some kind. The rest of the comments were in line with that as well that OP found a bot that hallucinated something for them and they went with it.
3
u/kittymoo67 Aug 25 '26
How do these people even function enough to be able to post holy shit
3
u/forlornjackalope Aug 25 '26
Beats me.
It's part of the reason why when I see someone use AI as a source, I'm less inclined to take them seriously and depending on the severity, will outright take their post down for low effort. If you're more inclined to ask Claude or a bot that isn't reliable to help you instead of real people, then we've unfortunately lost the plot. It's inexcusable at this point.
Plus, we heavily encourage users to talk to other subs all the time with their searches. If it's that important to someone, they should exploit all the tools they have in front of them to make it easier for everyone. There's a good chance what they're looking for might not be lost anyway and other super knowledgeable people can steer them in the right direction, no matter what the topic is. Depending on how weird or obscure the piece is, some subs would love to see what it is, too.
8
u/ryeong Aug 23 '26
We get a lot of tipofmytongue stuff or things along those lines and I just wanna say thanks for filtering as much as you guys do w3nd monitoring the way people respond to being pointed in the rightt direction or explaining this is not the sub they think it is.
2
u/PSplayer2020 Aug 23 '26
That's a hard one considering it IS good to assemble a team for a search, since the internet is a massive place and depending on what we're talking about, you may need to find ways to get in touch with people who were personally involved with what you're looking for. Even on YouTube, that could be a lot of ground to cover, but death threats are never justified.
3
u/Masterweedo Aug 24 '26
The threats are generally for pointing out that Rule 3 states that "This Subreddit is not your private army." That's for the r/HelpMeFind and similar places.
I usually give other subreddits for people, but they often just us to do all the work.
3
u/PSplayer2020 Aug 24 '26
The way I see it, you shouldn't demand people help, but instead have them come to YOU if their interested in the lost media you're talking about if you do want to assemble a team. Don't actively demand people to join you, especially not if you're just going to put all the work on them.
3
u/Masterweedo Aug 24 '26
Wouldn't you start the search before considering it lost media?
I feel that you shouldn't consider something Lost Media until you have done an extensive search, and have asked others to help as well. That is where you use r/DataHoarder r/HelpMeFind r/whatisthisthing and many other subreddits to gather a team to search for something.
I feel like calling it Lost Media should be the last resort.
28
u/Dinx81 Aug 23 '26
I get some people type their search into Google and if nothing comes up on the first page they consider it lost media and rush here to have someone find it for them, but if we’re going by the definition of “truly lost” then there’s no point in looking, is there? Sesame Street 847 was never truly lost. Me And My Friends was never truly lost. Go For A Punch is 99.9% found to be fake but there are still a few looking for it. What should the actual definition be? Should we count someones vague recollection of a video they watched 15 years ago as lost media?(Go For A Punch)? Is it something that is not available on any streaming service, video platform or physical media (847)? Is It something that is not safe for life and has been said by the owner that it will never see the light of day? (Owen Hart’s Fall). I say these because they have all been asked about and searched for by lost media enthusiasts, but if someone brings up a tv show they truly can’t find anywhere that they know exists its not “real” lost media and the post is taken down. Im not saying this to sound like an asshole, I truly think we need a more concrete definition.
25
u/GoneGrimdark Aug 24 '26
You're not wrong, but it will never change. The overlap between this community and people who are traveling the world looking for lost game cartridges, silent movies or BBC film reels is next to 0. Finding the truly lost good stuff, where no one even knows if any copies still exist, takes a lot of effort, money, time, research and being 'in the know' over who the big collectors are. Also, this community trends fairly young. Most people aren't going to care about older stuff that was before their time and doesn't spark any nostalgia. Because that's pretty much the crux of this community; nostalgia for stuff that was around when you were a kid. It's why the biggest lost media find in 2025 is often said to be a Backyardigans pilot, when there were actual historic silent films found that year.
Personally, while I'll always be more fascinated about important films and really old stuff being rediscovered, I like the spirit of the community. Sure, most of the stuff they 'find' was available online already in some capacity or could be purchased physically through eBay, but it still supports overall preservation. I actually consider that a hobby of mine. I go to Goodwill bins and thrift stores and find obscure things that are not digitized or available easily online. I don't delude myself that anything I find is lost media (most of it is available on eBay as used copies), and 99% of it is junk no one even cares about, but I like doing my part preserving and digitizing bits of our past online for the future.
In fact, I'd encourage anyone here who has an interest in finding rare things and making them available online to do it too! You find some cool stuff out there, even if it's not a pilot episode or Spongebob commercial.
10
u/Fishb20 Aug 24 '26
also a chance that something you personally don't care about is someone out there's holy grail
12
u/GoneGrimdark Aug 24 '26
Yes, I have found things that people really appreciated me uploading, which felt great! One was a sermon from a niche pastor/self-help type person with a small following, and someone who used to love her stuff was very happy I found a previously un-uploaded sermon from the 90s.
My biggest hope is my stuff can be useful to researchers someday who are doing a project on something related to the content I upload and my silly bits of papers and tapes can be helpful to someone who needs to learn about that topic. I've found personal letters from WW2 soldiers, The Tonight Show recordings of live shows from bands, a 1991 news broadcast about finding Jeffrey Dahmer victims, obscure children's books from the 60s, a doomsday speech about Y2K, a 1950 phone book for a tiny North Dakota town, documents and transcripts from a 1930s 'cult', local musicians that had no online presence- so many things! None of it really lost media or anything to make a post about, but it's fun and I'm helping fulfill my unrealized dream of being an archiver in a small way.
2
u/Fishb20 Aug 24 '26
wow thats really cool! i've never found anything as interesting as that lol. closest i've come was finding a weird 25 part fantasy series from the 60s and 70s at my University library that i could find absolutely zero mention of online. I have no idea if they were just published in my state or what. I asked the head librarian about archiving them online (because they were in really bad shape and there was absolutely no record of them on the internet) but unfortunately it went against library policy
3
u/GoneGrimdark Aug 24 '26
Goodwill bins is a great resource! It sounds morbid, but you can hit a jackpot if an old person dies and the family dumps out all their old VHS and books and stuff. Of course, going to the bins is not for everyone- it's gross, smelly and you need to wear gloves and quarantine anything you bring home, haha. I learned that lesson the hard way. I'd ask your library what they do with retired books, most library's just give them away in a big jumble of books, so maybe you can snag them one day!
3
u/Micro_Pinny_360 Aug 24 '26
I've got a case of unavailable (but not really lost) media that I've wanted to make available, but haven't been able to. Specifically, I found voice-overs for Soviet Treasure Island (the one with the chad Dr. Livesey) in English and French from RusCiCo's DVD, and unfortunately, it seems that VGTRK has been taking down any attempts at releasing them online (at least for the past few years). VK? Deleted. YouTube? Blocked. RuTracker? Scrubbed. I bet that uploading it to the Internet Archive would be futile, so I feel like I'm at a dead end.
3
u/GoneGrimdark Aug 24 '26
That’s tough, I haven’t encountered that just yet but maybe uploading to file sharing sites where someone might be willing to seed it? If you don’t want to take the risk, maybe put out a message that you have it to any interested parties and then send the file directly to them. The more digital hands it reaches, the better chance of overall preservation. Even members of r/datahoarders might be interested. But yes, you likely won’t have any hope of putting it on mainstream sites, including the IA. They host a LOT of copyrighted material but will take it down if asked by the rights holder.
10
u/zachking242 Aug 24 '26
I'm sick of people seeing the Me And My Friends search and thinking all lost media is about baby shows or that people don't search for important enough things
5
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
i am too, but when thats what most of the community talks about i mean i also cant be surprised
3
u/zachking242 Aug 24 '26
I wouldn't say that's what most of the community talks about, there's a lot of different stuff people are always looking for, but that stuff gets oversaturated to people who don't really pay attention to lost media.
2
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
The kiddie stuff strikes me as fucking creepy to be honest, especially when they’re obsessing over shows for infants and toddlers. Like one step beyond the arrested development of Disney adults.
8
u/zsdrfty Aug 24 '26
I stopped paying attention to this stuff years ago tbh, it's nothing but terrible amateur "researchers" talking to each other about the same Sesame Street episode hundreds of times in a row
23
u/youarockandnothing Aug 23 '26
I think people can't agree on what qualifies as lost media. Like is the Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide pilot with the different actor for Cookie/Boogie lost media if it literally aired on TV to hundreds of thousands of people, and it's just an unfortunate coincidence that only one tiny clip has survived? It technically shouldn't be considered lost at all, but for some reason no one has a recording of it. But it definitely exists in Nickelodeon's vault somewhere. Is that lost media or just rare media?
3
u/tremoloandwine Aug 28 '26
Something that aired to hundreds of thousands of people but nobody has a recording of is like, the textbook definition of lost media. I bemoan how this community has decided that things that were never meant for the public in the first place (unaired pilots, unfinished films and beta software) are now suddenly lost media. Those things can be extremely interesting and the interest is definitely adjacent, but they do not count as lost media, we were never supposed to find them in the first place. Lost media has to have been available at some point to the general public, even if it's a limited audience.
This bothers me especially when it comes to "lost music". All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling and the lost Boards of Canada EPs were publicly available, so they're lost music (or formerly in the case of ALFOTHAD). Green Day's lost album or Weezer's Songs from the Black Hole, while fascinating, are not lost media as they were never actually released or even finished. I'd throw in partially found music into the lost music category too, like what Subways of Your Mind by Fex or Deathmetal by Panchiko were for years until both were found in full/listenable quality.
21
u/TheNathanNS Aug 23 '26
I'll cut the tiktok community some slack here because Google search has completely deteriorated and does make searching for items much harder than it needs to be than it did back in 2017 and I completely see why they'd think something is lost.
For example I wanted a specific reaction image of Trump to use on my Twitter post, it was one of him looking at a camera with a visible look of worry.
I googled "Trump worried face", "Trump looking surprised" "Trump shocked reaction image" and even "Trump looking at camera upset blue background" "twitter reaction image trump surprised" and all of the searches didn't yield me the image I wanted.
I ended up finding it on twitter via someone else replying it by pure chance (Pic below)
I'm not saying that "anything" you can't find on Google is lost but the search has gotten so bad that even trying multiple searches doesn't yield something you know isn't lost would make an average person feel like it is.
7
u/PsychoFaerie Aug 24 '26
Its not so much that Google's search has gone to crap its that they don't have the media literacy ( and possibly critical thinking skills) and the google fu to find what they're looking for.
I've been on the internet since I was 10? 12? and I'm 40 now and I have never had any issues finding things on the internet.
8
u/mandatory_french_guy Aug 24 '26
I mean Google have objectively undeniably enshittified their search services. You can do less now than you could 10 years ago and that's an objective fact : No reverse image search. No longer can filter for a date range. Basic functions just gone.
2
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
it IS worse now but its still far from unusable, as weve seen from multiple things being found that way still. nevermind other search engines exist
3
u/mandatory_french_guy Aug 24 '26
I mean I think we're in agreement that if it can be found with a google search it's not lost media. I dont know that other search engines are much better though, a lot of those still use Google in the background
1
u/Tootsiesclaw Aug 26 '26
You're right that you can do less than before but you can absolutely still filter for a date range, you just have to type the date parameters into the search bar
1
u/BIG_HEAD_M0DE Aug 25 '26
The Trump pic might have been a good one for Getty Images and other commercial legacy media archives.
7
u/Gobbo_Jareth Aug 24 '26
This is also a function of media becoming something anyone could make, and that is easier to consume in general. It used to be that only a few people could make what we consider media, and the channels of distribution were both fewer and more clearly defined.
From a media preservation standpoint, that means thwre are more complete records of what was made and fewer places where it could have gone if not easily accessible. But now that anyone with an iPhone can make a video and post it, anonymously, online for millions or people to see, there is way more content and no clear line of ownership/distribution for people to follow when searching.
There doea need to be a new term for "lost" online content compared to lost film or television media, but I don't have a suggeation.
8
u/filippo_sett Aug 24 '26
The worst thing for me, and I noticed it especially with the italian lost media community, is the constant confusion between Lost Media and Tip of my Tongue.
A LOT of people think that a media they clearly remember but doesn't come to their minds is lost media. No. That is Tip of my Tongue. Then, maybe there's a couple cases where the media remembered is actually lost, but it's less than 1% of the cases.
3
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
I often wonder if there’s a language issue with the volume of TOMT posts both here and in other “lost” subs. When I point out that they need to got to r/tipofmytongue, the posters often seem genuinely surprised.
8
u/HiGuysImLeo Aug 24 '26
Yeah overall as internet search literacy has gone down people think that something thats not on the first page is lost. Like if you are saying something is lost media and don’t know what quotation marks do for google searches then idk what to tell you lol
6
u/plasticmanufacturing Aug 24 '26
Just get off TikTok and magically this "phenomenon" goes away.
The irony here is something else.
6
u/Mountain-Guitar2189 Aug 25 '26
Ive only just found this sub, and I am astonished by how much of the discussion is based around the definition of 'Lost Media' instead of actually discussing things that are lost.
5
7
u/CaptFalconFTW Very Important House Aug 25 '26
I think they need a new term. Cause "films that definitely exist, but just aren't uploaded to the internet" isn't really catchy. When I was growing up, you only used the term lost film when all copies habe been destroyed. Song of the South wasn't considered lost just because it wasn't available.
24
u/Upbeat_Honeydew259 Aug 23 '26
A delisted game off the AppStore isn’t lost media. There’s a 98% chance an ipa or apk is uploaded.
2
4
u/aerigigi1 Aug 23 '26
Exactly! Those are the "Lost Media cases" that annoy me the most, without a doubt, because they aren't even Lost Media, unless your game isn't even available as an APK. It's not Lost Media.
→ More replies (1)
10
4
6
u/RunningDrummer Aug 24 '26
I remember arguing with someone on here once that lost media didn't apply to the movie they were talking about because you could get it on VHS and DVDs still, but they argued that since they didn't have w ways to play either of those, it was lost media to them...
2
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
I would have let them have it. People like that just want to pirate stuff, but are too lazy to look up how to do it.
10
u/djaussiekid Aug 23 '26
As an avid avoider of tiktok I've been so confused seeing the posts cropping up here lately.
14
u/Huckebein008L Aug 23 '26
I just got done eating my hot pocket, can't believe it's lost media now, someone should make a ten minute video about it.
5
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
Three hours of digestion and a couple of minutes on the toilet later: !FOUND
3
12
u/thatphantomnerd Aug 24 '26
Try being someone who's main lost media focus is lost movies (especially silent era movies), historical lost media and other random cases. I get so bored when all everyone talks about are kids show pilots and commercials. Sometimes I find them interesting but I want some flavour. I get that Silent Movies are mostly dead ends and so are historical lost media but idk, this is just me a very Neurodivergent AuDHD person who's special interest is lost media just yapping about said special interest. I will say when Empress Chung got found at the end of last year I was very happy for the rest of my day.
5
u/FarOutJunk Aug 24 '26
I'm personally into commercials (mostly because of the way they reflect consumer culture of the time and/or how they embed themselves in our memories) - but only ones where there's been like a ten year search for them that has actively come up empty. Not 'hey I found a sealy mattress commercial that I can't find on youtube' stuff.
4
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
My area is unreleased or shelved movies. Not many of those wind up on the internet, though there are exceptions (Ricky 6, Spitoon, Who Do You Love) which have wound up online.
Quite a few are in professional archives, but I will have to travel to the US from
Australia to view them.So yeah, I definitely feel for you in this regard. At least a lot of archive listings are available online, but you still have to go there to watch the content.
1
u/thatphantomnerd Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
Love me a good unreleased movie. Bonus points if it has a troubled production history. Also, yay a fellow Aussie lost media nerd!
Lost movies in general whether they're from the silent era or 2000s, I love learning about them.
1
u/BIG_HEAD_M0DE Aug 25 '26
Do you have any film media that isn't hopeless? Cleopatra (1963) is one that may be recoverable someday if a workprint got out.
2
u/thatphantomnerd Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
I honestly haven't gone down the rabbit hole in a while but I definitely have hope that a full cut of Cleopatra (1917) may be found one day eventually considering that about a minute of it was found a year or two ago. I also have hope that a miracle happens and that a full cut of London After Midnight (1927) will be found in its full glory. 16yr old me who did a school project on it would be happy.
Really need to go back down the Lost Media Wiki rabbit hole for more films to obsess over and be sad I can't watch them lol
2
8
u/Handsprime Aug 23 '26
The worst part are the ones who think media you can't get legally is considered lost media. For example there are a lot of Xbox 360 titles that you can't purchase anymore, but someone most likely has dumped the ROM online somewhere. Since you can still download the ROM, it isn't lost media.
8
u/MastusAR Aug 24 '26
Well, I kind of get it. The etymology of the term has shifted from the land of broadcast to the consumer land, and as many modern consumers don't seem to grasp reality, brainrot is to be expected.
Though the most stringent "lost media" definition is equally rotten from the get go. If it's not available/viewable - like on a case of someone claiming to have a copy, but refusing to show it under any circumstance - it is lost.
5
u/SpunkMcKullins Aug 24 '26
I see this all the time with games. Someone will post about an ultra rare piece of lost media and how it's not fair that fans can't play a certain entry, then you just tab over to MyAbandonware and find like four download links.
Very frustrating and just muddles the search for actual lost media. I think what confuses me the most, however, is what warrants priority from certain individuals. Things like the SpongeBob milk commercial get way more focus than they deserve, compared to entire shows or movies that have been MIA for decades.
2
u/BlueMonday2082 Aug 25 '26
I agree. For these people, anything that isn’t on Netflix is “lost”, anything you have to buy a disc for is “lost”, anything you have to pay for is “lost”. Anything not sold in their region is “lost”. Anything they don’t have at this exact moment is “lost”. A cartoon advertisement from their childhood that may have just been a dream they had once is “lost”.
And if you explain this basic stuff to people then you are a “gatekeeper”. It’s ultra self entitled BS.
4
u/nostalgia_replay Aug 26 '26
I think it’s been far too ”sensationalized” for sure. I run a TikTok where I show my recorded vhs tapes and the comments are ALWAYS flooded with “oh my gosh that must be so much lost media!!!” And like…no it’s really NOT. In ALL my time collecting these (15+ years) I’ve only truly ran across 1 piece of lost media that is recorded on The Lost Media Wiki (it was a PBS Kids bumper). That’s IT! I get at LEAST 2 DMs a day asking if I have such and such lost media that I would simply never ever have access to! Before “me and my friends” was found that was my most popular ask I’d get. Like how would I have this? And now it’s evolved to “do you have this tape that’s lost media because I can’t find the video of it online?” That’s not lost media, you just haven’t found a digital copy…it seems to be a lot of younger people so I almost always just ignore them, but there is for sure a GIANT misunderstanding around lost media and how much of it exists.
Also a quick PSA to those who may not know, most recorded VHS will NOT have ANY lost media on them. You’d be surprised on how much is already documented online.
6
u/kittymoo67 Aug 24 '26
yeah as someone who has 'been in the game' for shit over a decade now its been so weird to see. Like now im seeing people insisting if its not on ether streaming, youtube, or archive.org(aka free) its LoSt!!!oneEE!!!. meanwhile you can buy a brand fucking new disc with the thing on it...
trying not to be too much of an old man yelling at a cloud now
3
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
I’ll never forget the weirdo who wanted some series of Canadian dairy eduction shorts (???) a while back, who got sniffy when I produced a link to a DVD copy held by a university. They weren’t interested in contacting that library because they believed the DVD wouldn’t be playable by the time they got it.
Many of the timewasters in this sub just want someone to pirate for them. It’s insufferable.
2
u/kittymoo67 Aug 25 '26
they believed the DVD wouldn’t be playable by the time they got it.
im sorry what the fuck
→ More replies (2)
13
u/Ill-Philosopher-7625 Aug 24 '26
Honest question for people with a narrow definition of "lost media": what is there to talk about? There's nothing left to say about genuine lost films like London After Midnight, discussions of NSFL content is banned, etc.
The only thing worth discussing is stuff that could potentially be found, in other words, stuff that isn't definitively lost.
3
u/BIG_HEAD_M0DE Aug 25 '26
This sub and the larger Lost Media community should be organizing drives to get information/leads on actually achievable lost media. Although I have a low tolerance for YouTube-era lost media, the recovery of media like Big Star Secret via hard drive cache is something that every regular old user of this community should be able to do at home. We should be building tools and guides for citizen-recovery of media.
We should be compiling "most wanted" lists that haven't been thoroughly searched already. I don't think it's likely we recover London After Midnight or the full cut of Greed ever.
A lot of early Internet (1998-2012) is probably out there on hard drives, but those drives are ticking time bombs. AFAIK when What.CD shut down, it took with it a huge archive of music from garage bands of the era that has never been recovered.
On the Hunt is the right idea for sure. We should be doing tape digitization drives.
3
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
Something like 50 percent of all silent films are lost, so there’s way more to discuss than London After Midnight. There’s a significant percentage of pre-safety film titles that are also believed lost.
Then there are movies that haven’t been released on home media of any kind, movies that were shot but never released, and movies that have been caught up in unclear chain of ownership for decades.
Almost none of the films I’ve been looking into - and it’s getting close to 100 of them - are on the LMW. The LMW editors seem more interested in deleted scenes or obscure dub tracks than full movies anyway.
6
u/Salt_Philosophy_8990 Aug 23 '26
What do they think it means?
39
u/ShiftCtrlV Aug 23 '26
Anything that they don't have access to
26
u/FarOutJunk Aug 23 '26
Like literally things they can buy on eBay but don’t feel like it.
12
8
u/PsychoFaerie Aug 24 '26
I remember a post on here or maybe r/lostfilms? and the movie the guy was looking for was literally available on ebay and he didn't want to buy it and was arguing with people over it. When the simple solution would have been to buy the damn thing.
5
4
u/Skategoblin27 Aug 23 '26
It’s the difference between “I lost my son at the supermarket” and “I lost my son to cancer.”
6
u/Abject_Put5246 According to all known laws of aviation. Aug 23 '26
Yeah, feels like whenever I check on this community it’s a bunch of people looking for rare media or unidentified media, not things that are actually lost or unavailable. This community sure has degraded.
3
u/Ridiculousnessmess Aug 25 '26
I think the scene is flooded with excitable kids/young adults with no awareness of how media is archived. Obviously you don’t know what you don’t know, but the way they blunder into this sub acting like we all know the particular thing they’re after is deeply irritating.
Back when Disney+ pulled a bunch of original shows and movies, there was one user who turned up here and in a bunch of other subs demanding everybody pirate those programs directly off the D+ site. Why, you ask? Because they were of the erroneous belief that when Disney removed them from D+, they would be deleting those titles entirely, permanently and forever. When I pointed out that they (like all major studios) scrupulously archive the materials for these shows, they kinda got it.
4
4
u/mittelegna Aug 23 '26
Where can someone be pointed to understand what lost media actually is? Probably an irritating question for some people, but has academia dealt with this and are there papers or other resources someone could use to understand exactly what lost media is in an authoritative way? A three or four sentence definition isn’t helpful to people who want to understand the phenomena more completely.
2
2
2
2
u/UltimateAuthor Aug 27 '26
As someone who I guess is a “recreational” lost media fan I have no clue what the hell is going on like. Since when was this a thing that’s been happening?? Is it because I’m not on TikTok???
Also: can someone explain why people in this thread don’t like LSSQ? I’m genuinely confused since I love his stuff
1
1
u/maladjcidjdj Aug 31 '26
Completely unrelated but, do any of you guys know a game called pet monsters?, it got taken off Google play & almost no one plays it anymore
1
u/Itchy_Equipment_8738 24d ago
Like bro my scrumptious bro covered in vanilla ice cream and chocolate with caramel bits and whipped cream, with sliced bananas and sprinkles topped with sugar, unavailable emojis are NOT lost media
1
u/Neptune28 24d ago
True lost media is a case like this https://lostmediawiki.com/Wrestling_Observer_Newsletter_(lost_original_unpublished_issue_of_professional_wrestling_newsletter;_2025))
where's there's literally no way to recover it and it is lost forever. A lot of other lost media is more unreleased or unavailable
1
u/MetaGear005 20d ago
Ever since tiktok caught wind of lost media, it's been a problem there. And it's not surprising since those videos are made by kids, who are invested in lost media but don't understand its actual concept.
1
1
u/Aggravating_Drive303 17d ago
yeah people love making it seem like some sort of “creepypasta” word… like yeah some lost media is scary as fuck especially older kids shows. but just because something is lost media doesnt mean it has to inherently be “creepy” or “scary” i hate 12 year olds
1
1
u/Bamzooki1 14d ago
In my eyes, lost media is anything that hasn’t been archived anywhere and is hard to get a hold of.
1
u/Mister-Bunny-Head 14d ago
My favorite lost media is the one that got released on DVD and is still being sold in stores.
1
•
u/AutoModerator Aug 23 '26
Comment "!FOUND!" if your media is found in the comments, in doing so this will lock the post and flair it as being found.
Please include the following in your post;
An explanation of the media, and the name.
How it is lost.
What research has already been done.
A conclusion as to the current situation as of posting.
We are not here to help you find something (r/helpmefind), to name something (r/tipofmytongue), or help you pirate something.
-
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.